全球化专栏

Migration and China in the Chinese Century25

Frank Pieke26

1.Introduction: China’s rise and China anthropology

Until the late 1990s, anthropological research on the People’s Republic of China was predicated on a master narrative on China’s “really existing socialism”. Anthropologists documented the impact of the power and dominance of the socialist party-state and the shifts and changes of political campaigns, and the strategies and tactics of individuals, groups and local communities to evade, subvert, or simply survive these. Two structural changes in Chinese society have made this narrative increasingly irrelevant. First, the planned economy disappeared. This has created space not only for the market economy, but also for a whole range of structures, networks, organizations and practices that are only very partially and imperfectly captured by the term “civil society.” Second, the accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. As China rapidly became more present in the world, Chinese society began to be shaped by processes of globalization, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism to a degree never seen before.

What has happened under the impact of these changes is at one and the same time new and unique for the PRC, recognizably Chinese and generically modern. New forms of social organization and ways of life have emerged. Grasping the opportunities and negotiating the risks of life is no longer the concern of the state, but the responsibility of individuals, families, communities, organizations and enterprises. With these changes, the anthropological master narrative of dominance vs. subversion has been replaced by competition, accommodation and adaptation between a range of local, national and transnational actors that operate in society, the state and the economy.

Taking such a disaggregated and global view has many implications. Most importantly, China is no longer a unitary and self-evident object of research, separate from the rest of the world. The challenge has become to understand China as a changing composite of elements rather than a natural unit. Furthermore, these elements of China are each in their own way interwoven with, yet at the same time separate from elements from other parts of the world. With these changes, our audience has also changed. China is no longer a faraway place, unfamiliar, strange and exotic, and therefore also largely irrelevant, except perhaps as a Communist enemy or a radical alternative. China now has become an aspect, or theme, of life in places across the world, and everybody will have a Chinese experience, or at least an opinion.

To this must be added that China is not just one of many countries undergoing the dual transition of globalization and neoliberal reform. After the rise of Japan in the previous century, China is the first country making the transition from simply a part of the non-western periphery of the world system to being a superpower and core of its own regional and increasingly global system of political, strategic, economic, religious and cultural dominance. For China anthropologists this means that we will have to find ways of thinking and writing about a society that is much more than just another culture. As a global power, China not only self-consciously draws upon its remembered civilization to realize the wish to be in charge of its own version of modernity independently from western civilizers. China also does not hesitate to become a civilizer in its own right, imposing its modernity upon others.

With this, anthropologists of China will bear ethnographic witness to global processes of domination, expansion and exploitation from the vantage point of a newly emerging centre. China ethnography will have to follow the footsteps of the culture that it studies, investigating the impact of Chinese people, power and culture across the globe. We must now focus on globalizing, civilizing and creolization processes both in China and elsewhere, in which Chinese culture is one of the ingredients. The new China anthropology should identify how “China” or parts thereof are constructed in a variety of arenas and circumstances across the globe.

The challenge is thus to understand China as part of and interwoven with, yet at the same time separate from other areas and a world system still dominated by the West. This process of what I have called “Chinese globalization” includes much more than just the transnational flows of goods, money, ideas and people. Chinese institutions—the state, businesses, banks, voluntary associations, religious organizations, criminal gangs and so on—are nowadays deeply interwoven with the world beyond China in ways that were unimaginable only a few years ago （Pieke et al 2004, chapter 1）.

There are many ways that this can be done. Recent ethnographic work on transnational Chinese religious organizations, the extraterritoriality of Chinese investment zones, the localization and marketing of Chinese manufactured goods, Chinese traditional medical practitioners, or employment practices in Chinese-invested firms are examples of this kind of work, looking at China as it is constructed both within and beyond China’s geographical borders.

In my own research, I have done so mainly by building on my work on Chinese international migration. My objective in this article is to bring together the more recent findings from my research on Chinese migration to paint in broad strokes the changes in China as an international migration country. Doing this will hopefully show the relevance of China anthropology in the Chinese century, when China is seemingly everywhere, and the world is everywhere in China. I will first outline the main trends in international emigration from China. After that, I will compare the impact of international Chinese migration on two continents—Europe and Africa—to show two very different faces
of China’s global presence. I finally will turn to international migration to China, to show that China’s new place in the world also shapes China into a much more cosmopolitan space where the categories of “China”, “Chinese” and “Chinese culture” become increasingly problematic, or at the very least much less self-evident.

2.The development of Chinese international migration after 1978

China is one of the most important sending countries and has also become increasingly significant as a destination for international migrants from the whole world. The most important fact about Chinese international migration is perhaps the incredible diversity of migratory flows and Chinese ethnic communities. Unlike thirty years ago, migrants are now from all kinds of social and cultural backgrounds, hail from all over China, and include business and government expatriates, investors and entrepreneurs, students, professionals, contract workers, unskilled job seekers, and family migrants. Chinese migrants fan out all over the world in search of employment, business opportunities, educational qualifications, marriage or family reunification. Added to this must be the vastly larger number of Chinese who travel abroad for shorter periods as tourists or visitors on business, on exchange programmes, or as members of delegations. The world is indeed becoming a Chinese space, with long-term emigration being a vital, but by no means the only component.

With the resumption of emigration from China between the early 1970s and late 1980s, new migration from the PRC consisted of two main types. The first one was the resumption of emigration from areas where before 1949 the majority of overseas Chinese came from. These new overseas Chinese first went to communities of overseas Chinese established before 1949, but gradually branched out to other destinations in search of opportunities. The second initial flow of new Chinese migrants consisted of students and visiting scholars. Chinese students chiefly went to the US, with smaller numbers accepted by other developed countries （Japan, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand）. At this time, almost all Chinese students were postgraduates on exchange programmes or scholarships.

New trends since the 1990s

This relatively ordered pattern of Chinese international migration, with reasonably well-defined flows and areas of origin and destination, changed fundamentally in the 1990s and 2000s. Some of these changes were at least partially path-dependent in that they followed from the impact that on-going migration had on policy-making and social and economic development in sending and receiving areas. However, change has equally much been driven by fundamental changes in Chinese society. Economic reform in the cities really began to bite in the early 1990s, weaning increasing numbers of urban Chinese from the dependence and restrictions of the Chinese “work unit” system. Reform and foreign trade also generated unprecedented economic growth, in turn creating a new entrepreneurial elite and middle class with a life style and expectations to match. In terms of social and spatial mobility, Chinese now have almost as much freedom as residents of non-socialist countries. However, as China’s market reform creates an increasingly level playing field, it produces not only winners but also losers. The latter include rural dwellers in the interior or otherwise isolated places, farmers in peri-urban areas losing their land to development projects, and urban residents shed by state enterprise reform without much hope of finding comparable employment.

The overall result of these developments has been that the types, origins and destinations of Chinese migration have changed and proliferated. Emigration is no longer limited to a few pockets of Chinese society, but has become an option that can be entertained by Chinese across the country and from a wide range of backgrounds. In other words, these migratory flows have to be understood as transnational aspects of domestic patterns of geographical and social mobility resulting from the fundamental changes that have taken place in Chinese society, rather than being caused by the near-universal “culture of migration” in many overseas Chinese areas. The universalization of migration across China therefore emphatically does not entail that the number of Chinese migrants is now only limited by the obstacles that sending and receiving countries manage to put in their way—many factors impinge on migratory decisions, opportunity being one and only one of them—but it does mean that Chinese migration has become highly diverse, making it increasingly difficult to speak about Chinese migration in the singular in any analytically meaningful sense.

The new Chinese migration order that has arisen is shaped by three main features: （1） commercialization, （2） the role of the local state and （3） the spread of Chinese migration across the whole world. First, the commercialization of emigration has spawned a world-wide business that includes everything from schools for language or professional training in preparation for work or study abroad, to emigration agencies that advertise in newspapers or on the Internet, to the gradual commercialization of assistance originally given free of charge to friends or family. The commercialization and professionalization of emigration was pioneered by Fujianese migrants to the US in the 1980s. The first things that may very well come to mind here are illegal migration, asylum abuse, human smuggling and trafficking, but commercialization is actually a much broader issue. In recent years and in response to increasingly successful attempts at cracking down on people smuggling from China, smugglers in Fujian branched out from transport by sea and over land to organized flights using counterfeit documents. When that became increasingly difficult as well, smugglers started arranging for genuine visas for fake marriage, business or study abroad （Pieke et al 2004, chapter 3; Chu 2010, chapter 3）. Emigration from Fujian foreshadowed developments in China’s Northeast （also known as Manchuria） and other provinces, which in the late 1990s suddenly put themselves on the Chinese emigration map. The Northeast in the 1990s was a rustbelt of ill-performing state-owned enterprises. Emigration provided urban workers a much needed escape from unemployment; in their wake, rural dwellers also quickly availed themselves of the opportunities to go abroad. Commercial agencies that facilitate travel and emigration abroad drive much of the emigration from the Northeast and elsewhere. These agencies are often connected to state-owned enterprises and operate in full view of the authorities （Pieke and Xiang 2010）.

The second key feature of the new Chinese migration order is the role of the local state. Central Fujian province provides the best-documented example. Informally, individual officials of the government of coastal central Fujian had been involved in the illegal emigration business already from the early 1980s （one of the key reasons why emigration could flourish in this area）, but the government could not openly been seen to be involved.27

In many other places beyond the designated overseas Chinese areas, local government （rather than individual officials） is in fact one of the key agents in the spread of mass emigration. The first example from my own research dates from 1990 in the interior of Fujian Province （principally Mingxi County）, an industrial centre dating from Mao Zedong “Third Front” strategy of the 1960s and early 1970s, but also an area without any overseas Chinese tradition. Acutely aware of the success of international migration very nearby in coastal Central Fujian, the authorities were keen to raise the local standard of living through migration just as had happened along the coast.

At the time, the local government’s encouragement of emigration still had to be carefully weighed against the provincial government’s displeasure and the general sensitivities arising from Fujian’s illegal emigration business, and the local government could not openly facilitate emigration. Later, however, the county government felt confident enough to establish a migration guarantee fund. This fund gave loans to potential migrants to help them pay for their migration overseas. Money for the fund was provided by the county’s International Economic and Trade Office, the Agricultural Bank, and the Department of Finance. Subsequently, a new policy allowed banks directly to fund migration rather than through this government fund, thus even further widening the scope of such practices and fully integrating migration into the local economy. With the backing of the local authorities, the area became an important sending area of Chinese migrants to Europe （Pieke et al 2004, chapter 2）.

The third key feature of the new Chinese migration order is the globalization of migration. Until the late 1980s, individual Chinese migratory flows tended to single out specific destination areas with well-established Chinese ethnic sectors and communities from the same area of origin, only gradually expanding into adjacent areas, thus minimizing competition between Chinese groups. Starting in the mid-1980s, the Fujianese were the first to break through this mould. By focussing on the US and later Western Europe, Fujianese migrants entered the territories of entrenched communities of Chinese from Hong Kong, Guangdong, or Zhejiang, where they were mostly treated with hostility and as cheap, expendable labour.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s this example was quickly followed by the Zhejiangese, who aggressively expanded from their traditional stronghold in Western （and more recently Southern） Europe. In the 1990s, Zhejiangese appeared in new frontier areas, such as Eastern Europe or Africa. They also established a foothold in North America.

Students and professionals

Globalization of Chinese migration is also a consequence of the rise of educational and professional migration. In the 1990s and 2000s, Chinese education migration has proliferated, both in terms of sheer numbers and in the range of student backgrounds, destinations, and degrees pursued. As China got richer, foreign study came within reach of the offspring of China’s burgeoning entrepreneurial elite and even the salaried middle classes.

Chinese professional migration is to a large extent the by-product of educational migration, when graduates seek employment in the country of study （or perhaps elsewhere abroad） rather than return home. This pattern is particularly pronounced in the US, but is significant in for instance Western Europe and Japan as well. Direct immigration of professionals from the PRC is also significant and on the rise, not only to regions and countries where one might expect it （North America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong）, but also to African countries that perhaps seem non-obvious to a Western observer.

Emigration has also become a much more generally available avenue for social mobility for people across China and from all kinds of backgrounds. For them, a decision to emigrate follows from diverse educational, employment, or entrepreneurial strategies in which emigration is carefully weighted up against domestic employment, entrepreneurship, or higher education, all of which may also include possible migration elsewhere in China. In other words, these migratory flows have to be understood as aspects of general domestic patterns of geographical and social mobility created by the fundamental changes that have taken place in Chinese society. Migrants of this type aspire to find white-collar employment or self-employment, although a considerable number may actually end up having to settle for low-skilled work abroad, either in the ethnic Chinese sector or else as day labourers in agriculture, manufacturing, or food-processing （Pieke and Xiang 2010）. The numbers involved in these migratory flows can be large and are most likely to grow in absolute terms, but we would expect that only a very small percentage of the potential migration base will ever actually emigrate. For the vast majority, opportunities in China itself will continue to be less risky and expensive, and more attractive, realistically available, or in tune with one’s preferred life style.

3.Chinese migrants and communities: Europe and Africa

In Europe, China’s highly diverse migratory flows encounter not only the institutions of the receiving countries and established groups of overseas Chinese, but also each other. In this encounter, Chinese migrants have to make choices on how to deal with the realities and discourses of Chinese life abroad, choices that in turn weave patterns of community formation, identity creation, division of labour and political participation that are as much Chinese as they are unique to each place and time.

Chinese living in Europe can be divided into two main categories. Europe has long been the destiny of Chinese migrants seeking employment or trading opportunities, often in a specific Chinese sector of the economy. Their aim usually is to start in menial, unskilled employment and then work one’s way up to become the owner of a business, for instance a restaurant, store, or workshop. The other group of Chinese residents is, on the whole, a much more recent development. Chinese are increasingly coming to Europe to study at a university, vocational school, training programme, or high school. In addition, an unknown number of wealthy Chinese own a second home in Europe, are here as expatriate employees of Chinese firms or organizations, have immigrated or stayed behind after graduation as professionals, or have married a European resident.

Meaningful and reliable figures on the total number of Chinese in Europe are notoriously hard to get. This is not a new problem, yet little seems to be done about it. Eurostat collects and compiles data from its member states; a recent report details that China with 97,000 immigrants in 2008 was the second largest source of immigrants into the EU （after Morocco with 157,000）. The same report states that Chinese were the tenth most numerous group of foreign citizens resident in the EU with 2.1 per cent of EU total foreign population in 2008. With a reported total number of foreign nationals in EU member states （including nationals from other EU states） of 31,860,300, this percentage yields a total of 669,066 Chinese nationals in the EU in 2008.28

National statistical bureaus of individual European countries often （but not always） provide numbers on their Chinese population. However, individual countries employ different definitions and methodologies to divide their population up into ethnic or national categories. The UK, for instance, employs ethnic self-identification in its censuses. In 2011, this yielded a total number of resident ethnic Chinese in England and Wales of 393,141.29The Netherlands in its population records uses country of birth of self and/or parents: a 2011 study yielded a total number of Chinese of 71,500 in 2010, almost two-thirds Dutch nationals （Gijsberts et al 2011:29 and 41）.

One Chinese estimate of the total number of Chinese in Europe （however that might have been defined or measured） ranges between 2.6—3.2 million in 2010. Of this group 800,000 are said to be “new migrants” who plan to stay in Europe （excluding illegal migrants and students; Li 2009, Song 2011）. This estimate, while probably generous, seems not too far off the mark when compared to the Eurostat, UK and Dutch figures, especially when not taken too literally and used merely as point of comparison with similarly derived figures for Africa and other places. In the Dutch data （see note 5）, roughly one-third of Chinese in the Netherlands holds Chinese citizenship. If we extrapolate this on to the Eurostat figure of 670,000 Chinese citizens we can conclude that there are probably three times as many, i.e. about 2 million people, with China as the country of birth of self and/or parents. To this an unknown but significant number of people must be added who in a UK-style census would classify themselves as Chinese, despite the fact that they or their parents were born outside China. A further unknown are illegal immigrants who are almost completely beyond the reach of government statistics.

Unskilled migrants and entrepreneurs in Europe

In all, five major groups of unskilled workers and entrepreneurs have fanned out across Europe. In the 19th century the first to come to Europe were small traders from two adjacent areas in southern Zhejiang: the hinterland of the port city of Wenzhou and the rural area around the town of Qingtian （Thunø 1999）. Emigration from Zhejiang subsided after the Great Depression, the Second World War and the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, but quickly gained pace again after roughly 1974.

The second group are the Cantonese from the Pearl River Delta who came to the major ports in Northwestern Europe （London, Liverpool, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Hamburg） as seamen. By the end of the Second World War, most had left Europe, but a few did stay on. They were joined in the 1950s by fellow Cantonese from the New Territories of Hong Kong who came to Britain in large numbers to find work in the Chinese catering trade （Watson 1977）. From Britain they spread first to the Netherlands, and later to Belgium, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Spain and Portugal.

The third group of Chinese in Europe are from former European colonies in Southeast Asia and other regions. After the fall of the US-backed regimes in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in 1975, 75,000 Chinese from Indochina fled to France; smaller numbers of refugees were accepted by other Western European countries. Approximately 10,000 Chinese from Indonesia arrived in the Netherlands after Indonesian independence in 1947 and the Chinese pogroms in the 1950s and 1960s. Finally, relatively small numbers of Chinese from other former colonies, such as Singapore, Malaysia, Mozambique and Surinam, also found their way to Europe.

A fourth group of Chinese are immigrants from Central Fujian province who appeared in Europe in the second half of the 1980s. Their arrival was a direct consequence of the activities of human traffickers in Fujian. Originally, most of those who ended up in other European countries either could not afford passage to America, were abandoned half-way, or were simply given no other choice. Only in the 1990s did Europe become the target of migratory flows from Fujian specifically destined for one or more countries in Europe, most commonly Britain or （in the case of Fujianese from Mingxi county） Central Europe or Italy （Pieke et al 2004）.

The fifth and final wave of Chinese immigrants are city dwellers, initially mainly from Northeast China, but not much later from all over the country. Their presence became first apparent in Central and East Europe immediately after the fall of communism there. Particularly in the initial phases, their migration often was an individual, rather than a family decision. Many built on contacts with state enterprises and trading networks in China to provide goods and services to the undersupplied economies in the former Soviet bloc （Nyíri 1999, 2007）. Soon, however, urban Chinese appeared all over Europe.

Specialization in specific sectors of the economy has given the Chinese populations in each region of Europe its own characteristics. In Western Europe the catering trade and the ethnic sector continue to dominate. In Eastern Europe the importation, wholesale and retail of cheap Chinese manufactured goods is the main activity of the Chinese population. In Southern Europe Chinese specialize in small workshops that produce leather goods, garments or other products specifically aimed at local tastes and fashions.

For labour migrants from old and new overseas Chinese areas, employment in Chinatown or more generally the Chinese ethnic sector, such as the catering trade or leather goods or garment sweatshops in Europe, is not merely a second choice option, but in fact the main pull factor. Immigration of large numbers of Chinese willing to accept often gruelling work and living conditions revitalized the ethnic enclave economies and spurred their growth and spread.

What is unusual about the case of recent Chinese labour immigration is the sheer force and volume of the migration push generated by the high degree of commercialization of emigration in China. This has led to a surplus of Chinese labour and an even further deteriorating bargaining position of recent immigrants versus potential employers in the countries of destination. The obvious consequence has been an even further worsening of wages and working conditions. Migrants, especially if they stay and work illegally, are also especially vulnerable to extortion and protection rackets. Migration pressure in Britain recently has also had the effect of pushing Chinese migrants into employment outside the ethnic enclaves, which, in the case of women, also includes prostitution （Gao and Poisson 2005, Pieke and Xiang 2010）.

Students and highly skilled migrants in Europe

Young Chinese travel to Europe not only for a postgraduate degree at a top-level research university, but also for undergraduate degrees, high school diplomas, pre-university courses, or short-term certificate courses in English or other vocational skills. Europe is attractive not only for the quality of the education received, but also for the relatively modest fees that universities charge, especially compared to the usual number-one choice, the United States. Chinese students currently are by far the largest group of foreign students in most European countries, whose governments and educational institutions energetically compete in this profitable growth market （Bohm et al 2004）.

According to a recent report of the European Commission and the Chinese Ministry of Education, the total number of Chinese students in the EU in 2010 was between 118,700 and 120,000, or about six times more than in 2000. This number is comparable to the United States which had 127,600 Chinese students in 2010. Of the total number of Chinese students in the EU, 40 per cent was in the UK, 23 per cent in France, and 20 per cent in Germany.30 In the UK, China is the number one foreign country of origin for higher education students.31 There is some doubt whether this high number will continue in the future. Chinese universities have been expanding fast and Chinese parents and students often rank good universities in China higher than European universities. In the UK in the mid-2000, considerable disquiet existed among Chinese students at third-tier institutions, while English-language training centres were often mere fronts for labour immigration.32 Recently, the rescinding of post-study work visas threatens to make the UK less attractive to Chinese students.33

The aspect of the Chinese presence in Europe that is least known about is investments and enterprises and the associated immigration of Chinese professionals and their families （and quite unlike Africa where it is the aspect that receives the most attention）. Despite occasional eruptions of suspicions about the impact of China’s rise, the greatest worry of economic policy makers is a lack of substantial Chinese investment in Europe. Chinese-invested enterprises fall roughly into two categories. Larger Chinese corporate subsidiaries are more concentrated in Western Europe. Smaller individual entrepreneurial firms predominate in Eastern Europe, although they are by no means absent in Western Europe. The smaller firms tend to be concentrated in wholesale or retail trade; the larger firms focus on knowledge-intensive sectors. Smaller firms, usually privately owned, are more likely to have been set up in close cooperation or even partnership with local Chinese, who thus play a crucial role in bringing these investments to Europe. Larger investments are strategic, aimed at accessing European technology, brands, markets and skills. They may employ local ethnic Chinese or Chinese from Hong Kong or Taiwan for their familiarity with western culture and business practices, but their business partners tend to be non-Chinese.34

 

Chinese in Africa

There are currently about 10,000 South African-born Chinese, whose presence in the country dates back to the 17th century. During the era of apartheid, several tens of thousands Taiwanese （Taiwan being one of the few countries to recognize South Africa） came to and settled in the country: there are now several thousand left. Chinese emigrants from the PRC came in rapidly rising numbers from the late 1980s. Rough estimates of their numbers currently in South Africa range between 200,000 and 350,000 （Huynh et al 2010）.

Chinese were present elsewhere on the continent at former Western trading ports or colonial centres, but, with the notable exception of Mauritius that served as a hub of the Chinese coolie trade, these were much smaller than the South African community. Africa now is very different: Chinese live in larger or smaller numbers all across the continent. They hail from all over China and are in Africa for many very different reasons and duration. Four different types of Chinese in Africa can be distinguished. The first is the established Chinese community of Chinese born in Africa. As mentioned, this category is only significant in South Africa and possibly Mauritius.

The second category includes traders, businesspeople and investors, mostly from an urban background. Just like in Eastern Europe and at about the same time, they were the first to explore this virgin territory for business opportunities, pioneering individual agents of China rapid economic expansion. This group has now diversified to include not only individual businesspeople and independent professionals （medical practitioners for instance）, but also employees or owners of Chinese companies with often very considerable interests in Africa that include mining, construction, manufacture, land development and agriculture （Yan and Sautman 2010, Yan and Sautman 2013）. Development projects are another important aspect to China’s presence in Africa. According to Deborah Brautigam, Chinese companies carry out most of the African Development Bank and World Bank projects in Africa.35

The third category is mostly rural migrants from the overseas Chinese areas of Southern Zhejiang and Central Fujian. They arrived somewhat later in Africa, sometimes in the first instance as extensions of Europe’s large communities from these areas. For these migrants, migration to Africa is not part of a state or corporate effort to strengthen China’s presence on the continent. Not infrequently, these overseas Chinese migrants （especially the Zhejiangese who were longest established in Europe） followed existing post-colonial links into Africa from the European country where they or their family had settled. From Portugal Chinese travelled to the Cape Verde Islands, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, or Mozambique; from France, they left for Francophone African countries.

Conversely, many migrants come to Africa in the hope to move on to other, more promising destinations in the developed world. There is also much mobility between African countries as Chinese migrants seek out opportunities for employment or business. South Africa, for instance, increasingly serves as a springboard for Chinese into other countries in Southern Africa. They set up or seek employment in trading companies or shops that specialize in the cheap manufactured goods that China produces in copious quantities and for which there is a ready market in many parts of Africa （Østbø Haugen and Carlin 2005, Dobler 2009）.

The fourth and final category of Chinese in Africa is skilled and unskilled workers recruited by companies or agencies in China to work on construction projects carried out by Chinese companies in Africa.36 The less-skilled tend to return after the end of their contract, at least some of the managers and professionals remain in the African host country as independent migrants, often establishing themselves as small entrepreneurs.37 The official total figure for contract and labour cooperation migrants has increased from 39,000 in 1997 to 114,000 in 2007 （Li 2010）.38

While the rapid increase and diversification of Chinese migration to African countries is commonly known, statistics widely vary. A reasonable total estimated figure, including older and newer migrants, would be around 500,000 Chinese residents in the entire African continent, up from around 100,000 in 2000. By far the greatest concentration of Chinese migrants is in South Africa （200,000—300,000）, with Nigeria as a second-largest host country （50,000）.39

Europe and Africa compared

In both Africa and Europe, and indeed all over the world, Chinese immigration has shot up in the last decades. From a Chinese perspective, Africa and Europe are very different places. Europe is a continent where Chinese have resided for many decades. In Europe, universities and other educational institutions hold the promise of valuable knowledge and qualifications that qualitatively raise career prospects and life chances. Europe is among the most highly developed economies in the world, with not only a huge market for Chinese products and services, but also a place for strategic investments in high-value assets and market access and source of state-of-the art technology and skills. More abstractly, Europe is a focus of Chinese modernist longings, a place that long ago achieved a state of modernity that China still yearns for. Africa is the exact opposite of all of these things, but therefore arguably strategically even more important for China as a country and—even more significantly—for individual Chinese migrants and firms. As a continent on which, to Chinese migrants at least, the road to modernity still seems to be much less fixed, Africa complements China; China and Chinese migrants can conceivably play a central role in the future of the continent. In Western Europe, Chinese migrants, capital and government can at best only aspire to a role in the margins. Only in parts of Eastern and Central Europe could Chinese investments and people play a role somewhat similar to Africa, albeit on a much smaller scale.

However, viewed from another angle, Europe isn’t all that different from Africa. Granted, in terms of educational migration, Europe is one of the world’s most important destinations. Conversely, Africa is the location of many Chinese investment projects and with that the destination of large numbers of contract workers employed for a fixed term on a specific project. However, in terms of the drivers of migration and the background and origin of many other migrants, many similarities and indeed direct connections exist. Just like Africa, much of Eastern and Southern Europe has been a frontier of Chinese outward migration, with many migrants ending up in surprisingly similar employment or businesses, often associated with the import, wholesale and retail of Chinese manufactures. Since the 1980s, China has also generated commercialized and highly professional migration configurations from Zhejiang, Fujian, and many urban areas that have developed a global reach, always seeking out new destinations and ways and means to get migrants there. To these migrants, there often actually isn’t that much difference between Africa, Europe, Latin America, or any other destination. What is most important is the opportunity to emigrate and then to make the best of whatever chances there are to make a living or perhaps to move on to another, more promising destination.

4.Immigrant China

The international migration order has changed fundamentally in the last twenty years. First came a surge in new immigration to the developed countries in North America, Europe, and Oceania, soon followed by immigration in more recently developed countries, particularly in East and Southeast Asia. We are currently at the brink of a third phase of change, where the world’s emerging economies demand a prominent role, not only as countries of origin but also, and increasingly, as countries of destination for international migrants.40 This section focuses on China’s relationship with these new patterns of mobility. It is well known that China’s development has given rise to massive flows of both domestic migration and international emigration. Since the start of the reforms, these domestic and transnational flows suggest that the People’s Republic of China （PRC） is developing into a crucial hub of the global migration order （Papademetriou 2008）. However, what is less often noted, both in China itself and by other global actors, is the radical changes currently taking place that potentially will have an even greater impact in the next five, ten, or twenty years: China is rapidly also becoming an important destination of international migrants. These migrants into China, attracted by the promise of a better life, are beginning to fill specific gaps in the labour market created by economic and social development and demographic trends.41

In recent years, the media and a few academic researchers have started reporting on groups of non-ethnic Chinese immigrants, such as Muslim, South Asian, or African traders, foreign students, South Korean middle class settlers, foreign expatriates and North Korean refugees. However, with a very few exceptions （Zhang 2008）, none of these studies approach foreigners in contemporary China more generically as an immigration issue that is leading to the formation of ethnic communities, comparable in this regard to most if not all of the countries in the developed world, including many East and Southeast Asian countries. The mind-set that China is a country of emigration, not immigration has created a huge blind spot in the perception of China’s global role （Duara 2010, Pieke 2012）.

International migrants still are only a minute fraction of China’s huge population. However, foreigners are highly concentrated in specific parts of the country, such as Guangzhou, Shanghai, or Beijing. In these places, foreigners have become a long-term and important aspect of the urban landscape and, with an absolute number of over one million, the scale and variety of immigration in China already defies easy and unambiguous characterizations. As a start, three broad and overlapping categories of immigrants can be distinguished: （1） cross-border migrants; （2） students; and （3） middle class professionals, businesspeople and traders.

Cross-border migrants

China’s international borders no longer divide and separate. China’s border areas are becoming part of larger cross-border regions defined by complex relationships of co-ethnicity, religion, legal trade and illegal smuggling, marriage, employment, study, immigration and emigration, crime and subversion.

Today, probably more than at any other time since the establishment of the PRC, people living close to the border continue to maintain contact with their relatives and co-ethnics and move freely across the border, with or without a permit （Sturgeon 2005）. One particular issue that concerns local authorities is the inflow of women from the other side of the border as wives for local co-ethnic men. These women and their children are permanent members of their communities in China, yet have no legal status and are a major headache locally in the enforcement of state family planning （He 2008, Grillot 2012）.

Students

China has become a magnet for fee-paying foreign students. In 2007 the number of foreign students was 190,000, or more than five times as many as in 1997.42 Major state and private investment in the tertiary educational sector has made Chinese universities competitive in the lucrative international student market. As China’s global role increases, first-hand knowledge of Chinese language and culture becomes a more important asset, attracting ever larger numbers of students to China. The majority of such students take short-term courses specifically tailored to foreigners.

China has also become the choice of many degree students, mainly from Southeast and South Asia. In 2008, 50,468 foreign students were enrolled in undergraduate and 10,743 in postgraduate programs （Yu and Liu 2010）. Some of this is part of the government’s “soft power” strategy, but many students apply to Chinese universities also because of the combination of good-quality education, reasonable fees, and geographic proximity.

Professionals, businesspeople and traders

China’s cities attract ever larger numbers of businesspeople and professionals from the developed world. The communities of middle class and elite resident foreigners are no longer numerically dominated by expatriate employees of foreign multinationals, international organizations, diplomatic missions and “foreign experts” hired by Chinese state enterprises or organizations. Large numbers of foreigners have independently taken up long-term residence in search of local employment （with either a Chinese or foreign firm）, cheaper living costs, or to set up their own business. In addition, we should also include in this category the very diverse group of traders from Russia, Central, South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. To all of these foreigners, China is the land of opportunity, not just a stopover on an international career.

In the eyes of many Chinese, （white） westerners are the paradigm of what are known as yang dagong （foreign workers）. However, numerically this category of foreign residents is in fact dominated by hundreds of thousands of middle class Taiwanese, Hong Kong Chinese, South Koreans, Japanese and Southeast Asians, and, of course, returning Chinese nationals and former Chinese nationals.

Policy-oriented articles on foreigners in China often begin by stating that China’s growth, WTO membership, and general opening up have created a need for highly skilled foreign labour despite China’s own very large labour force. China is said to need, for instance, high-level managers, engineers, or employees with the skills necessary to operate in an international business environment.43

Despite their spread beyond areas designated specifically for foreigners, many groups of immigrants with a common background tend to concentrate in one particular city or neighbourhood and/or specialize in a particular type of employment or business. Such clustering （for instance through chain migration or professional specialization） is an important feature of settlement of foreign communities in for instance Guangzhou, a pattern reminiscent of the settlement of certain domestic rural-urban migrants in contemporary China, such as the well-known “Zhejiang Village” in Beijing （Zhang 2008）. In some cases, this has enabled the emergence of an ethnic infrastructure. In Beijing 80,000 or so mainly middle class South Koreans live in the city’s Wangjing district, supporting a large and well-equipped Korean school, restaurants, shops and travel agents.

The very large communities of Taiwanese in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Dongguan have established many schools that teach for Taiwanese degrees, while Dongguan even has a Taiwanese hospital. Taiwanese migrants are able to capitalize on a combination of an international background and native language and cultural skills. The Chinese government in practice actively encourages their migration. Entry and one-year residence visas as well as work permits are much easier to obtain than for other foreigners; since 2005, work permits are given without the normal restrictions on foreign employment （Tseng 2009）. Taiwanese migration, together with migration from Hong Kong and Macao and return migration of （former） Chinese nationals, is a phenomenon that complicates the notion of a divide between international and domestic migration.

Much smaller communities of traders exist from Russia, Central, South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Immigrant traders tend to create and exploit highly specific niches where dense co-ethnic networks and access to specific overseas markets give them a competitive advantage. The group of foreign traders that are by far the best researched are the Africans in Guangzhou, partially because of the visibility of what is locally known as “Chocolate City” （Qiaokeli cheng） and partially also as a corollary of the recent interest in the connections between China and Africa, including Chinese migration to the continent （Bodomo 2010, Østbø Haugen 2012）. Guangdong, as the manufacturing centre of the global economy, is a magnet for traders and procurement agents, while Africa has emerged as a natural market for cheap manufactured goods from China. Starting with a few enterprising students some fifteen years ago, currently about 30,000 Africans operate in Guangzhou purchasing manufactured goods for export to their home country either from wholesale markets or directly from factories in the Pearl River Delta.

Returnees

China’s affluence and opportunities attract more and more Chinese professionals and business people. The majority of highly educated professional Chinese may currently still choose to stay abroad. However, they are a huge talent pool that China will continue to be able to draw on in the years to come. In government policy, Chinese students and scholars abroad （liuxue renyuan） are kept completely separate from the overseas Chinese, despite the fact that they are often lumped together under the heading of the “new migrants” （xin yimin） and that the PRC’s overseas Chinese office （Qiaoban） is formally responsible for both （Nyiri 2010）.

Overseas Chinese leave China predominantly from rural areas, are unskilled and in a very real sense deemed superfluous in China itself. Their return migration is not a priority. The same cannot be said about Chinese students and scholars abroad: their leaving is considered a loss to China that can only be repaired by their eventual return. As the Chinese economy has grown, Chinese students and professionals abroad are increasingly talked about in terms of a brain drain. According to the Ministry of Education, at the end of 2011 the accumulated number of Chinese students abroad was 2,244,100, of whom 818,400 or 36% have returned to China. This is considered very low by policy makers and advisors in China, especially in view of the fact that the higher the educational qualifications attained, the lower the chance that a student returns.44

Policy has increasingly emphasized return, as part of the “inviting in” of foreign businesses and individuals （yin jinlai）. Returnees are very prominent among academics and senior administrators in higher education and research institutions, especially the more prestigious and better funded ones. Others are high-tech entrepreneurs or independent professionals; yet others work for large multinationals or government. National and local governments and university administrations strongly encourage students and scholars abroad to return to China to take up academic employment, encouraging them with a range of privileges and perks （salary, housing, research funds） regardless of foreign permanent residence status or even citizenship.

Returnees, or haigui in Chinese, have become a policy priority in China. Chinese administrations actively recruit among overseas graduates and scholars and encourage them to set up businesses or contribute their knowledge, skills and patents to partnerships with Chinese businesses. To woo potential investors, governments frequently organize conventions or fairs, creating what Xiang Biao has called an elaborate “ritual economy of ‘talent’” （Xiang 2011）.

Educated Chinese abroad are increasingly talked about in terms of brain gain, a huge talent pool that China will be able to draw on in the years to come. Return migration is directly linked with a key strategic issue that preoccupied the new Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao regime that came to power in 2002. In order to strengthen China and its position in the world, China will have to retain its long-term competitiveness and not get caught into the so-called “middle-income trap.” The way to do this is for China to make the transition to technology-intensive economic growth. Attracting or keeping highly educated workers and entrepreneurs, or “talents” （rencai） in Chinese government jargon, became central to this （Simon and Cao 2009）. In 2010, the government published a long-term talents strategy that in 2011 was incorporated into the 12th Five-Year Plan.45

It should be emphasized that recruiting educated Chinese abroad is only one aspect of this policy, and a conscious effort is made also to attract “real” （this is the way it is often put in more informal discussions） foreigners to live and work long-term in China. Nevertheless, the vast majority of people thus lured back to China continue to have a Chinese background; conversely, ethnic Chinese are much easier given long-term or permanent residency. For instance, the government’s flagship Thousand Talents Programme by August 2011 already recruited over 1,500 leading scientists and entrepreneurs. Over 70% were foreign nationals, mostly ethnic Chinese.46

“Fortune seekers” and problems of immigration

As some of the examples given above already show, neatly dividing foreign immigrants into categories such as “students”, “traders”, “businesspeople”, “professionals” and “cross-border migrants” hardly exhausts the reality on the ground. Migrants are highly enterprising and proactive in exploring the opportunities that China has to offer, and as a result there is very considerable overlap and spill-over between all of these categories. From the perspective of the Chinese authorities, the dynamic nature of migration has created a further category of immigrant that does not come to China for bona fide business, study, or employment, but opportunistically in search of wealth or survival. Few such “fortune seekers” （taojinzhe, literally “gold panners”）, are deemed not to bring any skills or capital to China: “many are people from poor countries without a profession, income, skills, or health guarantee” （Zhang 2007）. In short, these migrants do not contribute to China modernization, but merely take advantage of it.

In fact, almost any group of immigrants in China is internally stratified, having both highly successful professionals and businesspeople and more marginal groups without formal jobs or fully registered businesses. Such more marginal immigrants have to rely on their own resources and personal contacts, causing the growth of residentially concentrated urban “villages” （cun） or “cities” （cheng）, such as the Burmese and Vietnamese in Guangxi and the South Koreans. This pattern is found among many immigrant groups the world over, where the institutional infrastructure and employment offered by a co-ethnic community provides new arrivals with the chance to get established and ultimately become successful too.

Currently, foreigners still have certain privileges that are partially a leftover of the time that all foreigners in China were “foreign guests” （waibin） and partially because China needs their “talent” and contribution. In their discussions on fortune seekers and illegal immigrants, Chinese authors often conclude that such migrants do not deserve such courtesies, but should rather be considered similar to the “floating population” （liudong renkou） of domestic rural-urban migrants. Increasingly, the problem of the “foreign blind flow” （waiguo mangliu） is directly connected with that of the “three illegalities” （san fei） of illegal entry, residence and work. In many Chinese analyses, these problems are often discussed together with many other much more serious issues, including terrorism, organized and petty crime, drinking, drugs and violence, prostitution and unemployment, a list that is depressingly similar to observations on immigration in western countries （Huang 2003, Zhuang 2007a, Du 2008）.

5.Conclusion: migration and a changing China

In the early 1990s, Chinese international migration was limited to on the one hand specific overseas Chinese areas and on the other students and scholars on scholarships. International migration has now become an aspect of fundamental changes in Chinese society. Emigration is a option available to Chinese in many localities and from （almost） any background. Self-funded students, laid-off state sector workers, farmers, prostitutes, entrepreneurs and the political and economic hyper-elite alike now find their way to countries across the entire globe. As an increasingly normal aspect of life in China, the reality or option of emigration and return is having a fundamental impact on receiving countries and China alike.

Migration from China has become extremely diverse. The Chinese authorities have reacted pragmatically, without making any real attempt to construct a coherent and transparent framework of policies and institutions to deal with emigration, Chinese populations abroad and return migration. Conflicts and confusions between different policy fields and agendas cannot be resolved within the framework of overseas Chinese affairs. Rhetorically, the term “overseas Chinese” continues to be useful to way for Chinese government and emigrants to perform at specific occasions or for certain specific purposes the transnational unity of the Chinese nation, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, residence, or class. However, overseas Chinese affairs has remarkably few material implications, except when dealing with return visits or return migration of ethnic Chinese where “overseas Chinese affairs” provides a convenient framework both to fit and to insulate such returnees from Chinese society. The language and institutions of overseas Chinese affairs are ill-suited to cater fully to the priorities and expectations of migrants that do not come from any of the designated overseas Chinese areas, in particular high-skilled migrants, such as students, businesspeople, professionals, expatriates, or investors.

International migration to China is also making many places in China itself much more cosmopolitan. Immigrants insert a increasingly normalized foreign aspects into life in China, just as they bring back Chinese themes to their places of origin. Some of these are Chinese returnees （overseas Chinese, ethnic minority overseas Chinese, students, professionals）, others are from areas adjacent to China’s international borders. Yet others are from developed Western countries or developing countries in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. Many stay only for a visit or brief sojourn, but a rising number settle for a longer period, creating communities of foreigners that are becoming a permanent feature of the social landscape, especially in China’s richer coastal cities.

At present, China continues to be one of the world’s most important sources of emigrants. There is little doubt that China will continue to play this role for at least the next ten years, and quite possibly even longer. Developed countries thus have little reason for immediate worry about the supply, or migration “pipeline”, of migrant labour, without which their population would peak in 2020 and fall by seven per cent in the next three decades （UNDP 2009, p. 43）. However, international migration specialists are already beginning to think about what happens next, when “China, India and South East Asia could well become massive players in the international migration system with relatively little ‘notice’ ” （Papademetriou 2008; see also Hugo 2008）.

This chapter has given a glimpse of that future. As we have seen, China’s prosperity and opportunity are already attracting a diverse range of immigrants as the country is developing into the centre of gravity of the whole of East, Southeast and Central Asia. With the increase in the number and diversity of immigrants, China is beginning to face the formation of more permanent immigrant communities, many of which are residentially clustered and occupationally specialized. Their impact on China’s existing cultural, regional and occupational diversity will have considerable repercussions for the kind of country China will be in ten or twenty years from now. Immigration is set to become a key policy concern for China, both domestically and, as competition for international migrant labour stiffens, in the international arena as well.

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